"For touching a people who want to forget ugly problems, no politician equals the one who has already forgotten them himself," wrote the late Murray Kempton.

Although the columnist wrote this about Ronald Reagan, I thought of it again after seeing President Obama make his forceful health-care speech.

(And you readers who are writing that this Website has turned into a conservative maelstrom must not be reading your Liz. I am still the yellow-dog Democrat liberal of the Western world. But that doesn’t make me a bad person!)

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You probably read about or saw parts of the three-hour memorial tribute to the late Walter Cronkite, laid on in Avery Fisher Hall of Lincoln Center last week. This was an orgy of celebrity. The audience was chock-full of VIPs and, though it went on and on, afflicting weak bladders throughout the auditorium, it was a grand occasion.

I loved Walter. He loved me. We were University of Texas pals. So I am happy that two presidents attended and spoke at his good-bye. President Clinton, who was one of the chief speakers, did his unscripted emotional tribute early on. It was marked by his own deep sentiment at Walter’s friendship, offered to him and his family in their time of trouble in the White House. Clinton was simply sensational and if he is ever in need of a "love" fix from the public, all he has to do is appear anywhere in New York City. The audience went wild for him! (This was in sharp contrast to President Obama’s scholarly well-thought-out "importance of journalism" speech, made at the end of the memorial. Obama seemed cold, clinical and chiding by contrast.)

CBS made this event into a CBS spectacular but it was unavoidable that they couldn’t convince the audience that things at that network – and elsewhere – had not deteriorated since they let Cronkite leave the news desk all too early, back in 1981!

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Here are the speakers who I thought were the very best – Sir Howard Stringer, head of Sony and once the president of CBS News; three people who had actually worked closest with Cronkite – Harry Radliffe, Linda Mason and Rick Kaplan; and, finally, Bob Schieffer, who brought down the house with a hilarious story about how Cronkite had once forced him to effect an "interview" with President Ford in order to best a coming exclusive already won by ABC’s Barbara Walters. (Schieffer got Cronkite in to see Ford before Barbara could air and Walter asked the president one question: "Did you take your flu shot?" When President Ford said "yes … I did," Cronkite then led the evening news with this as his presidential exclusive. It lasted about seven seconds, but it was on air before Barbara could be. Ms. Walters, in the audience, took this in good-natured stride.

And, I say to CBS News, bring back Bob Schieffer for something, anything. He is so great!

Also, one must salute the jazz genius Wynton Marsalis for his New Orleans-type farewell as he paraded his artists around the Hall at the end. They helped turn this good-bye to Walter into a joyous noise.

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Conspicuous by omission, as the big three networks celebrated, was any mention of their formidable fourth competitor, Fox News. But it made me remember that once upon a time, I urged Fox chief Roger Ailes to try to get Walter Cronkite to come out of "retirement." Roger said to me, "I would take him in a heartbeat if I thought he would say yes."

Good-bye, dear Walter. I am sorry to say that no one at this memorial occasion thought to comment on your great talent as a dancer. You were tops!